Class "Star Wars" Project

Project Concept

The Group Project will deliver an analysis of "Star Wars" that is conducted entirely in terms of Course ideas and concepts.

The following are some of the primary Course concepts relevant to the film:

• Marshall McLuhan's three-stage definition of technology
• The Stages of the Hero's Journey
• Aristotle's Structure of Drama
• Doubleness in Western Civilisation

The film analysis of "Star Wars" will be based in the following three sets of guidelines.

1. Major concepts from the Course.
2. Film-analysis theory, from a minimum of two credible resources authorised by our BCIT Library. Part of this major, 30%, Course component is the Group's collective research into film analysis theory.
3. Your collective understanding of the film, and the ideas from it that you wish to highlight.

Project Formalities

1. Due date: May 6th, 2016
2. The project is worth thirty percent of the total Course grade, and the expectation for grading is that the work represented by the completed project is thirty percent multiplied by the number of members in the Group. Thus, if there are four group members then the completed group dialectical project will show effort, endeavour, and content equaling one hundred and twenty percent of a Course effort.
3. Each member of the Group will receive the same Group grade. The responsibility for ensuring equal contribution from each individual group-member is the Group's collectively in the manner of professional environments: this includes consultation with the Organisational Superior in the person of the Course Instructor....
4. Priorities:
•  Job 1: Deliver understanding of how the subject film illustrates major concepts presented and articulated in LIBS 7005.
• Job 2: Structure the project directly in terms of the particular film theory used to analyse the film: this includes both the specific principles of your film theory and the specific elements of the film that manifest these principles.
• Job 3: Calibrate your project to a (real or hypothetical)  target audience of practicing Mechanical Engineers, Accountants, etc.: i.e. your professional colleagues who have not had the advantage of successfully completing LIBS 7005 at BCIT.

Project Group Management. Each group will organise itself collaboratively. Division of responsibilities and tasks, schedule of dates for progress and deliverables, decisions relating to the realisation of the project criteria, and personnel-related matters, are all the responsibility of the group members in consensus. Where a  decision is required that defies consensus, the Course Instructor is the de jure Project Manager.

Project Work. Class-time will be assigned for work on the Group Project through the Term. The Instructor is available then for project consultation.

It is expected that some work on the project will also be done outside class-time, in line with the 30% of Course grading that the project represent per student.

Project Medium

The completed project will be accessible online, and will be in some accessible technical medium suitable to a polytechnic. The choice and design of the project medium will be guided by the criteria of (i.) accessibility, (ii.) effective delivery of the teaching intention of the project, (iii.) the technical student demographic of the intended audience, (iv.) the subject-matter of the film being analysed (i.e. technology boon or bane).

Project Outline. A one- to two-page Outline is due in hard copy at the start of lecture on Course Week Five The Outline will specify the following:

• the film title (approved in advance by the Course Instructor)
• a minimum two credible film-analysis resources (preferably found via the BCIT Library)
• the project concept and structure
• the project scope
• the project goal
• the project structure & organisation
• the work responsibilities and tasks by members 
• the schedule of progress dates and deliverables

Status Report. A one-page written status report is due in in hard copy at the start of lecture on Course Week Ten.

Dr. Stephen A. Ogden, BCIT LIBS

Film Theory Support

On "film theory",  SFU has databases available. (This is as a complement to the books available at the BCIT Library).
BCIT students can come to SFU and use our databases 24/7. Students are also eligible for a reciprocal borrowing card with us: they just need to show their BCIT card to get it. 

Here are some SFU books that can be asked for via Inter-Library Loans. Students can also request journal articles. These need to be asked for through the BCIT library with this form.

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b2023269~S1a 

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b6376640~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5966635~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5775277~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5561798~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5515475~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5468138~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5378869~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b6281054~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b6391068~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b5394289~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b3524870~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b1955458~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b1882975~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b1462524~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b6318945~S1a

http://troy.lib.sfu.ca/record=b6294851~S1a

The BCIT Librarian on duty at the BCIT Library will be, of course, able to help students do a 'film theory' search query on our databases.

Ashley Van Dijk

Library Assistant - Information and Instruction
778-782-3419
avandijk@sfu.ca
WAC Bennett Library
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC Canada V5A 1S6

Found Ironies

SITUATIONAL IRONY

RHETORICAL IRONY

On 'Nature'

What 'Nature' meant to the world before the rise of Science, and to the Romantics during its rise, is expressed exquisitely by Alexander Pope, in his 1709 Essay on Criticism. Some pertinent lines (in heroic couplets, no less) follow. Note for one that Pope is explaining to critics of art and literature that their analyses and expositions are worthless or worse if they do not use Nature as their standard. And note for another that Pope--an acknowledged intellectual genius of the first order--uses our own Homer as his ideal for art and idea.

Nature to all things fixed the limits fit
And wisely curbed proud man's pretending wit.
As on the land while here the ocean gains.
In other parts it leaves wide sandy plains
Thus in the soul while memory prevails,
The solid power of understanding fails
Where beams of warm imagination play,
The memory's soft figures melt away
One science only will one genius fit,
So vast is art, so narrow human wit
Not only bounded to peculiar arts,
But oft in those confined to single parts
Like kings, we lose the conquests gained before,
By vain ambition still to make them more
Each might his several province well command,
Would all but stoop to what they understand.
First follow nature and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same.
Unerring nature still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged and universal light,
Life force and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the source and end and test of art
Art from that fund each just supply provides,
Works without show and without pomp presides
In some fair body thus the informing soul
With spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole,
Each motion guides and every nerve sustains,
Itself unseen, but in the effects remains.
Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been profuse,
Want as much more, to turn it to its use;
For wit and judgment often are at strife,
Though meant each other's aid, like man and wife.
'Tis more to guide, than spur the muse's steed,
Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed,
The winged courser, like a generous horse,
Shows most true mettle when you check his course.
Those rules, of old discovered, not devised,
Are nature still, but nature methodized;
Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
By the same laws which first herself ordained.
Hear how learned Greece her useful rules indites,
When to repress and when indulge our flights.
High on Parnassus' top her sons she showed,
And pointed out those arduous paths they trod;
Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize,
And urged the rest by equal steps to rise.
Just precepts thus from great examples given,
She drew from them what they derived from Heaven.
The generous critic fanned the poet's fire,
And taught the world with reason to admire.
Then criticism the muse's handmaid proved,
To dress her charms, and make her more beloved:
But following wits from that intention strayed
Who could not win the mistress, wooed the maid
Against the poets their own arms they turned
Sure to hate most the men from whom they learned
So modern pothecaries taught the art
By doctors bills to play the doctor's part.
Bold in the practice of mistaken rules
Prescribe, apply, and call their masters fools.
Some on the leaves of ancient authors prey,
Nor time nor moths e'er spoil so much as they.
Some dryly plain, without invention's aid,
Write dull receipts how poems may be made
These leave the sense their learning to display,
And those explain the meaning quite away.
You then, whose judgment the right course would steer,
Know well each ancient's proper character,
His fable subject scope in every page,
Religion, country, genius of his age
Without all these at once before your eyes,
Cavil you may, but never criticise.
Be Homers works your study and delight,
Read them by day and meditate by night,
Thence form your judgment thence your maxims bring
And trace the muses upward to their spring.
Still with itself compared, his text peruse,
And let your comment be the Mantuan Muse.
When first young Maro in his boundless mind,
A work to outlast immortal Rome designed,
Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law
And but from nature's fountain scorned to draw
But when to examine every part he came
Nature and Homer were he found the same
Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design
And rules as strict his labored work confine
As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line
Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem,
To copy nature is to copy them.

The Concept "Nature"

A seemingly-simple plain and ordinary English word, "Nature" is one of the most complex, far-reaching, important, and hard-to-pin-down terms in the language.

We are using it to properly appreciate the sharp and antagonistic division between Enlightenment and Romaticism. The Enlightenment turned the word Nature toward its eventual reductive sense of the mecahnical agglomeration of earth, air, water, plants, and animals; where the Romantics revitalised its British 18th C. meaning (the province of the Augustans) as guide and principle of life and conduct.

This division remains still in effect--recognised or subliminal--as we shall see as our study of the literature continues.

Groups of students in a past iteration of 7005 researched 18th C. definitions of the Term, here listed following my own.

Ogden.
Nature: an objective standard, external to mind but fully accessible by it. 'Human Nature' is that which acts (by instinct, habit, or will) in accordance with that standard.

Justin, Sabrina, and Barrie:
Nature has two forms: Nature as an external reality and Nature as an internal reality. Nature as an external reality is that which is depicted outwardly and nature as an internal reality is that which man has inside him (Deane, 1935, 73).

• nature symbolises human limitations
• Human nature is that is in us which follows that standard
• During the renaissance period, the period before the age of reason in 18th century, people were inspired by arts and nature. The romantics that believe in nature may be people who have understand and experience the renaissance period.
• Human nature are characteristics of how one thinks, emotes, or act that is natural to them
• The Romantics and the Enlightenment served as a transition period from nature to science

Jared, Karen, and Neal:

Nature is reasonable -- Nature can be understood. Nature is rational. Man is part of Nature, therefore, man can be understood.

James & Larissa

-the 18th C. saw themselves as part of nature; “one-ness”
-Discovery of truth by observation for the current life rather than going by the Bible?
-a way to govern their actions/behaviour (humans were designed to act rationally) rather than laws?
-acting in accordance to nature is morally good
-source of inspiration/a teacher for poetry

"Hymn to Technological Man"

From Sophocles' Antigone, the Chorus' 'Hymn to Technological Man':

There are many strange and wonderful things,
          but nothing more strangely wonderful than man.
          He moves across the white-capped ocean seas                            390
          blasted by winter storms, carving his way
          under the surging waves engulfing him.
          With his teams of horses he wears down
          the unwearied and immortal earth,
          the oldest of the gods, harassing her,
          as year by year his ploughs move back and forth.                                   [340]

          He snares the light-winged flocks of birds,
          herds of wild beasts, creatures from deep seas,
          trapped in the fine mesh of his hunting nets.
          O resourceful man, whose skill can overcome                             400
          ferocious beasts roaming mountain heights.                                           [350]
          He curbs the rough-haired horses with his bit
          and tames the inexhaustible mountain bulls,
          setting their savage necks beneath his yoke.

          He’s taught himself speech and wind-swift thought,
          trained his feelings for communal civic life,
          learning to escape the icy shafts of frost,
          volleys of pelting rain in winter storms,
          the harsh life lived under the open sky.
          That’s man—so resourceful in all he does.                                   410      [360]
          There’s no event his skill cannot confront—
          other than death—that alone he cannot shun,
          although for many baffling sicknesses
          he has discovered his own remedies.

          The qualities of his inventive skills
          bring arts beyond his dreams and lead him on,
          sometimes to evil and sometimes to good.
          If he treats his country’s laws with due respect
          and honours justice by swearing on the gods,
          he wins high honours in his city.                                                   420
          But when he grows bold and turns to evil,                                             [370]
          then he has no city. A man like that—
          let him not share my home or know my mind.

SELF-TEST PROSE EXERCISE

EST PROSE EXERCISE

Effective prose in English is succinct, direct, and lithe.

By contrast, here is the ordinary type of ordinary sentence ordinarily written by the ordinary student.

“As corporations are in perpetual pursuit of maximum profits, social sustainability and responsibility are very frequently neglected.” 

As you see, the sentence is comprised of nineteen grammatical units.

1.  As
2.  corporations
3.  are
4.  in
5.  perpetual
6.  pursuit
7.  of
8.  maximum
9.  profits
10.  ,
11.  social
12.  sustainability
13.  and
14.  responsibility
15.  are
16. very
17.  frequently
18.  neglected
19. .

What is the minimum number of grammatical units (words and punctuation) that you can revise this sentence into: retaining all necessary meaning and eliminating error?

Mine is seven. 

Sophocles' "Antigone": Structural Doubleness

Lecture detailed the structural properties of Sophocles' Antigone: showing how the play is constructed according to a pattern of Doubles in dynamic interrelationship. A Western model which can be used as a (loose) analogy is a bridge, such as the Port Mann Bridge here in Vancouver, where various components in tension create a structural integrity.

The images below are pictures of the lecture notes across the whiteboards for the day's class.

"Antigone" L. Board

"Antigone" R. Board

Course Outline & Syllabus

For those of us accessing this Course Support site on mobile devices, this Post enables access to the Course Outline & Syllabus at the links list suppressed in the mobile format.

[What Today's Mobile Formatting Will Seem Like in Thirty Years Time]

Lecture Slides

Course lecture slides (which I advise you, should you want to get good grades, not to read--the reason being given on the section below on Post-Secondary lecture and study engagement for excellence) are as follows:

• Liberal Studies Writing
• Lectures A
• Lectures B
• Lectures C
• Lectures D
• Lectures E
• Lectures F

Course Website FAQ

Here are FAQ about the course website.

• The five most recent posts are displayed on the main page.
• A permanent link list, entitled "Res Prescribere" is always visible on the sidebar of the course website, containing direct links to crucial information.
• Also on the sidebar, always visible, is the "tabulæ" displaying direct links to all posts on the course website.
• The "tabulæ" has sections for previous years' variations of this course. The archive is for previous iterations of the course which may, or may not, be interesting for you.
• An "Older Posts" hotlink is always visible at the bottom of the main page which displays the next 5 most recent posts.

Course E-Mail Netiquette

Here are the points of e-mail protocol for our course :

1. E-mail (indeed, all communication) between Instructor and student is a formal and professional exchange. Accordingly, proper salutation and closing is essential.
2. Business e-mail is courteous but, of professional necessity, concise and direct. It rejects roundabout or ornate language, informal diction, and any appearance of what is termed in the vernacular, 'chat.'
3. Customary response time for student e-mail to the Course Instructor is two to three office days. E-mail on weekends will ordinarily be read the Monday following.
4. Use only your BCIT account for e-mail to the Course Instructor.

In general, Course e-mail is for matters of Course administration solely. All questions about understanding of lecture material, course reading, assignment criteria, and deadlines are reserved for Classes and Office Hour.

Missed classes and deadlines are not to be reported by e-mail: if a medical or bereavement exception is being claimed, the supporting documentation is handed in, along with the completed assignment, either in person or to the Instructor's mailbox outside the Department Office.

Valuable Resources for Reading "The Odyssey"

Here are some very helpful guides to assist in reading the assigned sections of Homer's The Odyssey, both from previous students in LIBS 7005.

First is this list of main characters and places in the book: Download Here.

Second is an html-form study quiz: the full code is at this link.

Third is a wonderful interactive grid that matches names of characters to their activities, their significance, their location, etc.--not only for the Odyssey but also for our second book, The Antigone, as well.

• The link downloads a compressed folder. Navigate into the extracted folder, LIBS 7005, and click on Libs_7005_Character_Database.xlsx   Download Here.

And another project of excellence: Stages of the Hero's Journey.

Opening Class Reading Assignment

From the opening seminar of our Course, the link to Stephen L. Talbott's foundational short essay "The Deceiving Virtues of Technology."

Voight-Kampff Test

The group project for a previous iteration of LIBS 7005 was to make an engineering project based on course material. Follow this link to see an online Voight-Kampff test from one of your predecessor groups.

A Very Obvious "Extension of Man"

Classfellow H.L. sends along a gloriously explicit illustration from CNET of Marshall McLuhan's description of technology as extensions of man.

Google Glass and the third half of your brain

Google wants to be an extension of your mind. Glass, though accompanied by skepticism and fear, is a gateway for Google to achieve that goal.

It's a McLuhan world...
(Credit: Image by CNET/Google)

Machine Characteristics

"Of Servile ornament...."

Linked here are extracts of major Victorian work by John Ruskin: a major intellectual whose vision centred on an indissoluble unity between human nature and human invention and its productions.

Lexical Links: Student Example

A strong use (a clear use) of lexical links in the 5-¶ Model, courtesy of Gurkaran Padam & Ben Moerman (Civil Engineering, 2014).

1. The Five-Paragraph Model is a technology for clearly communicating ideas.
2. The model begins with a clear statement of the main idea.
3. Subsequent paragraphs develop and explain this idea; making it clearly understandable.
4. Each paragraph ends with a linking sentence to provide a fluid reading experience.
5. In summary, the Five-Paragraph Model clearly communicates your main idea: your thesis.

Example of a Paragraph in the 5-Paragraph Model

1. The 5-Paragraph Model of the essay contains all the correct elements and in the correct order.
2. An opening paragraph delivers the clear and simple thesis, and a closing paragraph enlighteningly summarises the essay’s development of the thesis without adding any new material.
3. And in the middle, three development paragraphs successively prove the thesis: each using fact or reason to take the reader sentence-by-sentence from ignorance to knowledge.
4. Furthermore, this 5-Paragraph model of the essay is also the macrocosm of each individual paragraph, which means that each paragraph-microcosm has the same five elements and in the same order (the first element is called the topic sentence; the last element is called the linking sentence; while the middle three sentences are still called ‘development’.)
5. So, with all three correct elements in this proper order, the 5-Paragraph Model will (ceteris paribus) work for every essay, and other type of (non-fiction) writing.

Modern "Classical Greek Literature" Ephemera

The Odyssey is perennial --for good and for ill--as these links suggest.

• Saturday Night Live Skit
• 1930s Film Poster
• And of course...O Brother, Where Art Thou?, being The Odyssey updated.

And they're still talking about Sophocles, even on the estimable Arts & Letters Daily...